Islander Institute was born from the knowledge of many minds, the care of many hearts, and the practice of many hands.

In 1996 at a symposium in Massachusetts, 5000 miles away from our island home, Andrew Aoki first met Puanani Burgess. This chance meeting started a weaving together of indigenous ways of knowing, Western legal concepts, economic theory, political science, community organizing and activism, public management, entrepreneurship, spiritual healing, youth development, and island style facilitation.

The precursor of Islander Institute was 3Point Consulting, which was founded in 2002. By channeling analytical methods, political strategy, and organizational management into public problems in Hawaiʻi, 3Point supported public interest efforts and helped shape public policy in the fields of community-based economic development, wealth and asset building, access to justice, culture and arts, philanthropy, early childhood, renewable energy, healthcare, ʻāina-based education, and more.

The name “Islander Institute” was first uttered in 2008 around a campfire in Tennessee. A group of Islander’s founders were attending a social change workshop run by the Highlander Research and Education Center. A dream took shape around the idea of creating spaces for island people—just as Highlander did in the South at critical times, most notably during the Civil Rights Movement. Our dream was to create Islander spaces for the “dangerous conversations” that are necessary for social change; spaces for learning and training in community organizing practices; spaces for developing the strategies and plans to create the change we want to see in the world.

Islander Institute was officially organized in 2014. Significant inputs that led to this included a learning exchange in the Philippines hosted by the Consuelo Foundation, public narrative and other community organizing practices of the Leading Change Network, and the newest developments in the world of social entrepreneurship and civic enterprise. Since then, Islander has had the privilege to work alongside many people who live island values and strive to change our political, economic, and social systems so that they reflect those values.

Today, Islander Institute is Laurie Au, Kaipo Kukahiko, Alapaki Nahale-a, and Andrew Aoki.